It’s that time again: despite the ongoing excitement of the Fedora 12 Beta release, the Test Day schedule rolls along implacably, crushing the weak and puny beneath its pitiless wheels. Wait, that’s not right. It’s a happy, careful Test Day schedule of love. It would never crush anyone, let alone the weak and puny. Phew.

The bad news is this Test Day requires either an installed copy of Rawhide – aka Fedora 12 Beta – or a live USB boot; live CD boots won’t work for testing on most systems, as you need a lot of spare space to install some necessary packages. Live CD boots on systems with a lot of RAM may work okay. The good news is twofold: Fedora 12 Beta is so awesome you might be happy running it anyway, and running the tests for this Test Day is as easy as pie. The super-awesome team behind this Test Day (no, not me, I’m not that stuck up!) have written a script which runs the necessary tests and collects the results, and built it into an RPM package, so all you need to do is install the package, run the script according to the instructions on the Test Day page, then sit back and wait. The page even lists how long each particular test is likely to take. That’s as easy as Test Days get, so there’s no excuse not to come along and contribute your system’s test results!

The Test Day runs all day in the #fedora-test-day channel on Freenode IRC. If you’re not sure how to use IRC, see these instructions. Even if you can’t make the Test Day, you can still help by following the Wiki page instructions and submitting your results. These tests will be very helpful in making sure the power management improvements in Fedora 12 work for the widest possible range of hardware.